Tag Archives: coach drivers

You’ve read the stories, I’m sure: you’ve probably got, as I have, a mental picture. The mailcoach rattles through the arch into the straw-strewn innyard, chickens flying out of the way, the outside passengers ducking to avoid losing their hats – or heads. The ostler and stable-boys, alerted by the sound of the guard’s horn as the coach came down the High Street, rush to unhitch the old, tired, sweat-spattered team of horses and lead them away, at the same time bringing out a fresh team. The red-faced landlord, in tan breeches, black waistcoat, white shirt and white apron, his hair tied back in a short ponytail by a black bow, hands up a yard-long glass brimful of ale to the overcoat-laden mailcoach driver, who has no time in his schedule even to get down from his box. In a swing perfected by daily practice, the driver drains the long glass without a spill, hands it back down to the cheery publican and, refreshed, whips up his new horses, who gallop off back out onto the highway, the passenger-laden coach bouncing behind them and 10 more miles of muddy, rutted road ahead before they can all rest at the next stop. If there’s not a painting of that scene on the oak-panelled walls of some pub dining room with 18th century pretentions somewhere in England, I’ll swallow the nearest tricorn hat.

It’s a great tale, repeated often, and I never dissected it until I read it again in the Oxford Companion to Beer, where it appears in the entry for “drinking customs”:

“The diarist John Evelyn (1620-1706) mentions a yard of ale being used to toast King James II but the vessel has more plebeian origins. It was designed to meet the needs of stagecoach drivers who were in a rush to get to their final destinations. At intermediate steps the drivers would be handed ale in a yard glass through an inn window, the glass being of sufficient length for the driver to take it without leaving his coach.”

Perhaps because this occurs just four paragraphs after a claim that King Edgar, a pre-Conquest king of England, tried to limit villages to only one alehouse each in an attempt to cut drunkenness, which is definitely a pile of Anglo-Saxon pants (the permanently established alehouse as a village institution was probably at least three centuries away when Edgar was on the throne, and there wasn’t the infrastructure in his time to enforce such a law anyway – and nor is there a single parchment scrap of evidence for such a decree), myths were at the front of my brain, which is why this time when I read about coach drivers and yards of ale I finally went: “?”

Like this:

Beer Book of the Year!

The perfect present for beer lovers: more than two dozen true stories about beer, from the Great London Beer Flood of 1814 to how they flew beer across to the troops after D-Day in the fuel tanks of Spitfires. Click on the image above to buy

Buy the best book on British beer styles ever

Everything you ever wanted to know about the history of British beers: click above

Want this book and not in the UK?

If you're British-based, to go to Amazon.co.uk, click the book image above.
If you're US-based, to go to Amazon.com, click here

New: now on Kindle

Amber Gold & Black, the history of Britain's great beer styles, is now available as a Kindle download for just £6.66 from Amazon UK here or from Amazon in the US here.
"This is essential reading for anyone with an interest in beer as a drinker, a retailer or a brewer." – John Cryne, former chairman, Campaign for Real Ale

Follow this blog via Email

Enter your email address below, click on the 'Follow' button and
receive notifications of new posts
by email.